Tuesday, January 31, 2006

The Life of the Unborn

In all the buzz surrounding the State of the Union address, an important story was probably missed by several readers. Two federal courts ruled the ban on partial birth abortions unconstitutional. While I don't know all the details, my understanding is that the issue was with the wording, specifically the lack of a clause to protect the mother's health.

Nevertheless, before you celebrate this victory for "choice", I would strongly urge you to watch this video on aborted fetuses in the first trimester (CAUTION: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING!, well before the third trimester that the partial birth abortions refer to. I cannot think a person would not be moved by this video.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

you know what? i'm SICK of having these damn men make decisions for women!!!
~kiki

Karthik said...

Assume the mother died in childbirth, and the dad decided he didn't want the burden of a child. Does he have the right to choose to kill the child? Why should that child be afforded any less protection inside the mother's womb? If it's a life, then terminating it is murder. I used to be pro-"choice"; the turning point for me was seeing an ultrasound. Once you see one, you cannot argue that say, a 8-week old fetus is not a baby. (Or if you are up for it, watch the video link)

This is not a man deciding for a woman (pro-lifers are women as well as men). It's humanity deciding that murdering a child is a crime! As the folks at Abort73 write, the woman had a choice in all but 1% of abortion cases, and they chose to have a sexual relationship. That they don't want to deal with the consequences of their actions cannot be an excuse for murder!

Anonymous said...

totally the wrong argument, Karthik. Its like saying you are against the death penalty because the process of the person being put to death is gruesome. I'd much rather hear about the morals/values/beliefs behind a certain stance than point to how the act is carried out!!

btw, did you know that the video is shown to 12-13 yr olds in almost every catholic institution (no, i did not click on it to view it but I'm pretty certain it is the replica of 'Silent Scream' which has been doing its rounds for oh about 30 yrs)? a truly horrific way of explaining things to young kids.

Anonymous said...

I agree completely with the post from Uma -- the use of greusome video to convice people that abortion is wrong is just scare tactics.

If abortions are illegal in this country, women will simply go to other countries to get the procedure done. It will be an act of desperation and i ask you whether you think that will be more "healthy" for the expectant mother?

Karthik said...

The gruesome video is not intended to scare - just to educate that an abortion, no matter the nice words you may use to couch it, is murder! If you can't handle the fact, maybe you shouldn't have an abortion! It's amazing we want people to be educated before they can take a driving test, but not to be cognizant of what they are doing when they have an abortion!

Part of an abortion reform package would have to include greater access to counselling and adoption reform. Would that prevent some women from going abroad and having abortions? Probably not. But we can reduce the legal murder rate in this country, and we can hope that there will be greater societal influence to convince those women seeking them that there are better options than killing the unborn.

Anonymous said...

It is truly sad to see how you easily assume that women are ignorant of the abortion process. Classic case of projection, especially seeing that you had to watch a graphic video to know what it entails. But that attitude also smacks of a typical 'superior' male who thinks of us as ignorant creatures. And to use a driving test as an analogy? please, that totally reflects a state of immaturity. Revisit these topics when you are bit more worldly wise and have acquired a degree of sensibility.

Anonymous said...

if there was a possiblity that the mother died at childbirth, she should have gotten an abortion because her life would have been saved. there's no way of telling whether or not the child would have survived through the birth process.
as for adoption, our country doesn't have that many agencies. if it's an option, how come there are more than a million kids without homes the foster kids are treated like crap and i am sure if you talked to the majority of them, they would tell you that they wished they were never born.
you really should watch 'oprah'. she has a lot more useful and correct information than you do.
~kiki

Karthik said...

This is not a sexist issue. There are several women, evangelicals and otherwise, who are pro-life, including, may I point out, Norma McCorvey aka Jane Roe of Roe v Wade infamy. In fact, a pro-life position is very much a pro-female position! Think back a few weeks, when my home country India was in the news for an estimate a nonprofit did that some 10 million female foetuses were aborted. There was an outrage over the tragedy, including by Oprah Winfrey and other other feminists, and rightfully so! But that outrage was justified because 10 million female children has been murdered (incidentally, the official Indian government term is appropriate - female infanticide). If there was a super pill you could take that would let you have a boy, then it would still be disappointing that so many chose a male over a female, but hardly the travesty that the preference for boys is now. If choice is such a great thing, who's to say that women shouldn't have the right to choose the sex of the baby they wish to have. I believe they don't, but especially because that choice is achieved by the murder of a female child.

Anonymous said...

Why is everyone trying to convince each other? What's the point? Can you completely accept the other person's position is as valid as your own? If not, why not?

If you can't accept it (not that there is anything wrong with that! -- you are probably not meant to accept it), then you are just contributing to conflicts of the world -- that's the reason conflicts exist in this world. One side can't accept the other side's position/justification as valid as their own.